Injustice (Mobile) Players Demand Justice for Flawed Update

I waited until today to compose this article after a weekend of heartache.

Long before the hinting and promotions of a major update coming to NetherRealm Studio's popular Injustice: Gods Among Usgame app, rumors and debate over a multi-player mode seemed to dominate player conversation.

Imagine the leap in mobile gaming that would be! A live player-vs-player fighting game from the makers of Mortal Kombat.

Then, the day came and it was... not so much.

PvP, Yes. Live, Um... No.

Part of deflating letdown for the thousands of iOS players was that the multi-player aspect is, in effect, not really multi-player. It fits the definition in that your hand-picked team of DC Comic heroes and villains do battle with another player's team, but you are the only active player. You are playing their team, controlled by the system's AI.

So, as a player on the defending side, you only have control of team selection and order of entry. But, there's no real strategy choices that I can see. The AI simply will NOT play the way I do.

For instance, I love Insurgency Batman. I've fully leveled his Lunge Kick because it is simply devastating and can be a one-hit kill even against Gold Level opponents, but it's a 2nd tier attack. The AI tends to use 1st tier attacks more often, especially when the going gets rough. But, I'm willing to take a beating knowing that when I unleash it - KA-POW!

This also means you will want to be sure and have your multi-player team set to the best defense option before shutting the game down. So far, I've only played a little (43 matches) and won all 25 matches I actively played. My team has yet to win defensively. Bad luck, bad strategy, or is this a whole other concern?

The Slade... Slate Wiped Clean

Then came Friday morning. Black Friday I'm going to call it. A day that will live in infamy.

I picked up my iPhone after having tried the new Injustice update the night before. The game started just dandy until...

My entire collection of characters, boosts, etc. was gone! All of them! The game had completely reset my profile. Countless hours of grinding Story Matches and Challenge Modes negated. My roster was now just the original starting bronze characters.

Needless to say, the Amazon did not take it well.

(Just mentioning, this pic was NOT from my account.)

I popped onto Facebook and began checking the various game fan sites I follow. It turns out I was far from being alone in this horrific discovery.

Thousands of players had their rosters reset, characters deleted, cards removed etc. I scrolled through tale after tragic tale.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Others discovered messages that their profiles were banned due to game tampering. While some admitted their guilt, many others swore they had never altered or hacked their game.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

The cries went out loud and furious in the aftermath. Quickly, the developers at NetherRealm Studios offered an explanation, but also an apology.

In their efforts to curb potential hacking and fraud in their multi-player mode, the game company shifted many of their files to use iCloud, and be dependent upon the user's WBID profile. This does make sense as a matter of trying to maintain control by comparing the player's .bin save file to ensure it's not been altered in any way. As well as protect players from losing precious save data should their device crash.

(Piece of advice, if you see this screen - say NO!)

However, their proactive steps seems to have gone too far and a lot of players were caught in the net or rather their rosters were caught and flushed down the toilet. Perhaps a case of too little, too late on giving players a heads-up on what was changing, they posted a statement indicating what had happened and how players could protect themselves from a catastrophe.

The solution? Restore your game's progress from your iCloud backup. If you have one.

Great! An excellent solution! If I had only bothered to set up my iCloud profile and activated it. Which in the months I've had my iPhone I never bothered to do. I use Skydrive which actively backs up my media files and maintains all of my music and writing. I never had a use for iCloud. Did anyone think to warn us ahead of time to back up our game before the update? Maybe I missed it.

So, all of my hard-fought for Gold Level characters and won Challenge Mode roster members are long gone. Possibly, forever. And I'm sure I'm not alone.

The question is, will players depart unless this problem can be fixed?

Got that burning sensation that can only be quelled by commenting?

I was just banned from playing multiplayer. I had updated my phone from a iPhone 5 to a 6 plus and got the message saying I was suspended. When I contacted customer support they failed to explain why and stated I was banned for life. This is a horrible customer support system.

Can i ask you something a little off topic? If i have 2 gears of a kind, does that double the effect? I usually shatter duplicates thinking it is worthless to keep more than one. Or can i use that gear on 2 characters at the same time?

I just bought a bunch of credits today, and after each purchase I appeared to have received double the amount in which I paid for. I've checking my bank account frequently making sure I wasn't double-charged, and so far it doesn't look like I have been. I have used quite a lot of the credits this far, promoting characters, purchasing new ones, and so on. My question is, am I at risk of losing all of my progress because of this?

I'm having a bit of trouble with mine and I was wondering if anyone would be able to help me. Every time i start a fight it loads up and the fight begins and I can fight the opponent, which is good, but i can't see anything. All that's there is a black screen with health bars, power bars and all that stuff. So I can fight but can't see the actual fight. Does anyone know how to fix this?

@eisbread
Don't try that, it won't work. I copied my save file off the device then reloaded to try and fix some issues, when I tried to copy it back it renames your file "_NiceTry.bin" because this is the same way many people hacked it. I'm trying to find a way to copy MY OWN SAVE file back to the device but NOPE.

This can't fix the past, but you may want to try using a program like iFunbox, which allows you to copy save game information from your device onto your computer. If you ever need to recover the information, just copy the file back onto your device. Just remember to copy it every so often...

I too am having trouble with edit team on the mobile version. When I want to pick the flash it is not there because I have a roster larger than ten. How do I solve it? I have a samsung galaxy rush. I also can not scroll other screens.

- Actually, I fully agree on the hacker issue which is why I don't play a lot of PvP. As for Ares and Zatanna, they've been mentioned due to files appearing in the update but no formal date. I'm sure once the Luchadore Bane has run it's course that she will be on tap.

Ares I believe will be the last of the original console characters to finally come to the mobile version.

As for salvaging the loss, my iCloud account was hosed up before the update. So, it wouldn't have helped. However, since I have had to re-install due to the Facebook connection failing. It's working dandy now.

I played this morning and i took a break and got back on and it asked to change my saved game...i chose wrong. I had 28 characters and 12 were gold and I got them all LEGIT without buying credits. All my characters disappeared except 7 that I had and 2 are silver and the rest are bronze(all very low levels) and I can't get my old characters back but I have the old characters on my iPad/iPod but both aren't compatible so I can't do anything

Hey, I have an Iphone 4, and I am just wondering why I'll be playing the app, and not only does Injustice crash, but my ENTIRE phone crashes? I have never heard of that before, I went to the AT&T store to reset this, and my phone eventually came back on, however, I go to play the game again, and I beat one match and the same thing happens, I think they need to release a bug fix for that update because that was not cool, I was doing just fine until this happened.

- If iCloud salvaged anything for you, then you were lucky. It's taken a lot of people months to get their collections built back. In the end, I lost pretty much all the Challenge characters I worked to gain. I've still never recovered Zod, Aquaman and Raven - among some others.

I don't know if this is because of the update or not, but I can't progress past the second stage(battle 14). I've tried doing the battles consecutively using different characters and no matter what the third stage stays locked. Any help please?

It is easy to hack injustice without rising high concerns. I've done it. I ended up losing money on Injustice a long time ago. They stole from me, no restore purchases, no customer service. They didn't care. 50$ down the toilet. So using IAP cracker and GamePlayer, I beat the game into submission. Took my amount back that they could have restored for me with a simple Restore Purchases button. But I haven't gone to the extreme as one guy has and he somehow hacked his gear cards levels to be in the 8000+ range. iCloud obviously isn't as secure as NR thought it was.

Do I have to go trough Apple support processes to ask for something WB Games lost?

You don't keep backups?

What should I do if Apple doesn't have a back Up all those hours of play time are gone?

Thank you

On May 9, 2014 3:32 PM, "WB Games" <support@wbgames.com> wrote:

Greetings israel,

Thank you for contacting us on this issue, however, we are aware that after the 2.0 update, some players may have had their account wiped or have been suspended.

We ask for your patience until we come out with a patch to fix the issue, but until then, turn off your automatic updates just to ensure you would get the notification for the fix.

In the meantime, you can contact Apple support to try to retrieve any data that can be obtained from the iCloud. Any lost data that you made purchases for can also be refunded through Apple once they escalate your case.

There is no time table as to when the update will be fixed but we are normally pretty quick when it comes to updates.

I started playing this game again after seeing it had gotten a multiplayer mode. After playing for a week and getting 2 silver characters and one full elite bronze past to level 23ish. All of it was deleted. Fix this problem quick.